It's Washington Capitals hockey, all day, all night, all the time . . . or when I get around to it

Monday, September 23, 2013

Countdown to Opening Night by the Elements: Number 8

We’re down to number 8 in Fearless’ look at the elements of
the periodic table (he skipped number 9…Cheerless kept yammering about being
anti-fluoridation or some such thing), which means we are down to…

Oxygen

Most of what you are is oxygen.We do not mean in some metaphysical sense,
that oxygen feeds your soul or something. No, most of what you are in the
physical sense is oxygen, because it binds with hydrogen, producing water.Water comprises most of the mass of living
organisms.It is that ubiquitous, that
necessary for life processes.

When it is not cozying up to hydrogen to form water
molecules, it exists naturally as a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas.But if you think those qualities make it dull
and lifeless, well…

It’s in the name.“Oxygen”
comes from two Greek words – “oxys,” meaning “acid,” and “genes,” meaning “producer.”But we get ahead of ourselves a bit.Way back in the 2nd century, BCE (“Before
the Common Era”), a fellow by the name of Philo of Byzantium conducted what are
thought to be the first experiments on the relationship of combustion to air.Philo didn’t get things quite right, though,
thinking that air was “converted” into fire.

That’s okay, though.A lot of experimenters got close to figuring out what was at the heart
of combustion, but didn’t quite get there.Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Boyle, John Mayow – all of them respected
figures in the annals of science – came up short.Then things kind of took a turn.A couple of German chemists – Georg Ernst
Stahl and J.J. Becher – came up with something called the “phlogiston” theory,
an odd duck of an idea that held that combustible materials were of essentially
two parts. A “phlogisticated substance (we don’t make this up, we just report
it)” that contains “phlogiston,” which is released when burned, and a “dephlogisticate”
that is left behind as a result of combustion.

You know what we need now, don’t you?A Swede!Yup… Carl Wilhelm Scheele came along in the 1770’s and produced oxygen by
heating oxides of mercury.Only he
called it “fire air.” A little later, Joseph Priestly confirmed the finding in
England.Antoine Laurent Lavoisier tried
to horn in on the discovery, but he didn’t “discover” this fire air until after
Priestly told him how he did it.What
Lavoisier did, though, was establish that the “phlogiston” theory was a crock
(it was really, as we all know, a planet in Romulan space), and – this was the important part –
establish that air was a mixture of two gases, one of which was what he called “vital
air.”That name being kind of dull,
Lavoisier renamed vital air “oxygen.”In
the end, Priestly gets the credit for discovering the element because he
published his findings first in what is chemistry’s most famous example of “you
snooze, you lose.”Sorry, Carl Wilhelm.

So now we have this element; what is it good for?Well, lots.First, it is an extremely reactive element.Even though oxygen occurs naturally as a gas,
it gets used up in a variety of reactions and has to be replenished in the
atmosphere by photosynthesis in plants.It is essential to biological function, establishing itself in proteins,
carbohydrates, fats, inorganic structural elements (teeth, bones), and it is
critical to respiratory processes.

It has other applications as well.For example, oxygen therapy or hyperbaric
treatment.It is used as a breathing gas
in pressurized space suits and to assist breathing in low-pressure environments
(mountain-climbing, for example).It is
used in steel manufacture and welding.It is an important element in rocket fuel.

It can be hazardous due to its reactivity.In high concentrations it can promote rapid
combustion.An oxygen source in close
proximity to a fuel source can result in explosion if a triggering mechanism is
present.If liquid oxygen leaches into
organic material (that containing carbon), the material can explode spontaneously
if jostled or force is applied to it.

What we are left with is an element that is as essential as
there is for life processes.It is the
predominant element in the air that we breathe.It is highly reactive, a critical element in rocket fuel, one capable of contributing to combustion or, in
special situations, detonation.It
sounds like a foundational player, one without whom success would be nearly
impossible.A player capable of generating
spontaneous reactions from fans with his rushes up ice and his ability to score
from almost anywhere.And, having the
atomic number “8,” we have…

WE INTERRUPT OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

The Washington Capitals enter the 2016-2017 as one of 12 franchises in the NHL never to win a Stanley Cup. Of that group, only the St. Louis Blues (48 seasons), Buffalo Sabres (45 seasons), and Vancouver Canucks (45 seasons) have gone longer never having won a Cup than the Capitals (41 seasons). Six teams came into the league after the Capitals entered the league in 1974-1975 and have won Stanley Cups: Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils (1976-1977), Edmonton Oilers (1979-1980), Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche (1979-1980), Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes (1979-1980), Tampa Bay Lightning (1992-1993), and the Anaheim Ducks (1993-1994).

The other stuff

Pictures, logos, and the occasional quotes used here are the intellectual property of other folks (unless otherwise noted) of considerably more productive imagination than the author of the original stuff read here, which is our very own.